"Game Music".

And so I begin this post by listening through the Original section of the Famicompo Mini 6 entries with a song that starts with a sample going WTF. Oh well.

But yeah, the stuff I'm listening to is just an assortment of music composed for the Nintendo Entertainment System, with 2 pulse waves, 1 triangle wave @ full volume, 1 noise channel, and 1 DPCM sample channel (the quality from this isn't very good; it sounds incredibly filtered). There are extensions for it that can boost that (e.g. VRC6 adds 2 pulse waves + 1 saw wave, VRC7 adds 6(?) FM synth channels, Namco 106 adds 8 short PCM waveform channels), but a lot can be done w/o these extensions.

In short: these are chiptunes.

I really don't like the term "game music" or anything along those lines to describe a genre, as in "it sounds gamey" or "it sounds like it came from a video game". Video game music is not a genre. If I found some obscure jazz, prog-rock, or instrumental blues artist (prog rock is really obscure these days), did an electronic cover of it, people would probably call it "game music" (at least that's my theory).

Why do I say this? I was listening to the music from a few Sonic the Hedgehog games (Casino Night Zone was never a level, go play the real version, and I mean that really nasty game on the Master System that absolutely hates you (the Game Gear version also counts despite the fact that they made the boss music more cliché and less awesome)), and couldn't help but notice how blatantly jazz-like some of the melodies were (chromatics and weird timing galore).

This is probably one of the most blatant examples (if you actually need to watch bandwidth (read: you live in New Zealand) then just stick it on 240p). At about 0:24 you get some melody that if some McMusic industry player caught you sticking that in someone's song, you'd get fired, just because it's... well, too good to "sell".

If you are a girl, chances are you would probably prefer listening to the ending credits music instead (view this at 240p as there's no real gain in audio quality at 360p, plus the Sega Master System only outputs at 240p anyway). It's considerably more laid back, and almost sounds a bit like an older pop song actually. Seriously; just add lyrics, play it live, and you've got a radio hit that sounds better than most of the garbage on there. Just don't end it with the Game Over music.

Of course, there's this piece, too (sorry about the random pumping up of the audio; it's probably the recording screwing up - I have the original .mod file on my file space thing so if you've got a .mod player such as VLC, try that). As stolen by Timbaland. (That video is brilliant, btw, so even if you've done the story to death, watch it.) He was interviewed on a radio station and made a complete fool of himself, saying it's from a videogame.

What game is Timbaland referring to when he says "it's from a videogame"? NOTHING - it was composed for an international and somewhat underground music making competition and it won. It was so good that Timbaland had to steal it twice, and you may have heard the second theft of it ("Do It" by Nelly Furtado).

The example of Acidjazzed Evening is probably the least "gamelike" from what I've heard from the sorts of people who say that stuff "sounds like game music". Probably because some of it sounds a bit like a pop song. Which is probably why Timbaland stole it.

Anyways, enough ranting about Timbaland. You could make a whole album of songs he's stolen.

OK, that's really enough now.

Now I'm listening to the stuff from Alex Kidd in Miracle World. I'm not sure if it's appropriate to use the term "film music" as a genre now that I've said that the term "game music" is a silly term, but it's kinda like that. The main theme sounds like a ballad*, I guess. The underwater theme sounds like a ballad, too.

*I actually don't really know what a ballad is. Please just mentally substitute ballad for "song where you essentially have verse after verse after verse". It just seems easier to say "ballad", though.

The castle theme sounds a bit weird, and if you REALLY had to pin the term "game music" to something, this would be one of those very rare cases where you could. But seeing as we're trying to dispose of the notion of "game music", I'd probably go with "piano music with drums". Actually, no, as "piano music" is also a misnomer. Let's call it pop music on loop. In other words, a ballad.

The motorcycle theme sounds like a ballad. The helecopter theme sounds like a ballad to the point where I mentally wrote lyrics when I was young along the lines of "riding in my helicopter".

OK, enough ranting about it. The genre seems to be the same genre as fairly classic songs (and I am NOT referring to the "classical" era) fit, and I really can't pin a name to it (as you may have read from the, ahem, "footnote", they're probably not ballads).

Now listening to some music from a game I have never played: Afterburner (Master System version). This is blatantly rock, some older stuff, some of more of a "prog" nature (of which jazz is a major influence), some pop-rock (I think). Oh... I just found some more jazz. And some stuff I can't really identify.

Dare I say "piano music", Monty on the Run's (C64) theme seems to fit here. Of course, I'd probably call it "ragtime with drums".

Spy vs. Spy (Master System version) seems to take from... I KNOW THEY'RE ALL GENRES. Unfortunately, the playroutine seems to be crap. Come to think of it, it's probably blues.

Hopefully there are enough examples for you to understand a general idea. I cannot go onto a proof by example, nor can I successfully find that Far Side comic Geoff Whittle was talking about in a MATH161 lecture about a mathematician hell or something.

Oh, and this is actually a game. (It was based on a movie. Some language by the players on the video may be a bit coarse - you have been warned. It's also a rather long video, so wave goodbye to 20MB - and that's if you're watching it on 240p.)

What I've deduced is that a lot of game musicians (as in musicians who compose music for games) take influences mostly from jazz, blues, rock, and older instrumental music (disclaimer: most of this is 80s-90s - later stuff tends to be orchestral and/or rock and/or "real" songs you hear from albums, though there's probably a lot of stuff I haven't covered). Rock seems particularly prominent in "game music", though there's usually quite a bit of jazz influence, too.

What I've also deduced is that when people call your music "game music", it starts to get rather annoying. Please don't, it just gets tedious.

The impression I get is that all the people who make "real music" and not the trash you hear on the radio, and want to make a lot of money, make music for films and/or games - some of the stuff you hear in games is just brilliant.

But however you look at it, it's all still music, just in this case usually without lyrics. If you've got something that can play module music such as VLC, have a listen to some of the stuff I've got on my web space (for .vgm files you'll need a VGM player, in which case I'd recommend Audio Overload for Windoze and OSuX users and possibly Audacious (or vgmplay.py) for Unix users, and for .rad files you'll want adplug / adplay - just casually ignore the .a2m file). AFAIK most of this isn't game music, though one .mod was deliberately done for a particular game for someone.

others/ has stuff by people who aren't me, others/murder/ has stuff I've ruined in one way or another, collab/ has stuff by people who aren't me while doing it with people who are me, pax/ is just a bunch of sample packs, squaz/ is stuff from some competitions which usually aren't mine, and covers/ is stuff originally by people who aren't me but covered by people who are me. The rest are by me (I hope, although labfight.it is technically a cover of a Sonic 1 piece done in the style of another composer).

If you like that sort of stuff, there's modarchive for similar things, and if you want more chiptunes then there's 8bitcollective.

Anyways, that's my rant over.